Japan Steps Away from Nuclear Power

As Japan and France move away from nuclear energy, is it the endgame for nuclear
proponents?

As the world slouches into the 21st century, one of the global economic realities
is that more and more developing nations, much less the "First World," are
competing for fossil fuel resources whose production is rising more slowly
than demand.

Complicating the picture are the booming economies of two BRIC nations, India
and China, a development that ensures that developed nations will be in increasing
competition for global supplies of oil, natural gas and coal, whose production
is struggling to keep with increasing demand.

An alternative relentlessly pushed by Western corporate interests is nuclear
power, whose proponents never cease to remind their potential audience that
nuclear power plants (NPPs), unlike those fired by coal or oil, emit no greenhouse
gases, no small consideration in the world community worried about global warming.

But the global nuclear power industry has three strikes against it - cost,
catastrophes, whether man-made (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl) or natural (Fukushima
Daiichi) and the not inconsiderable problem of disposing of nuclear waste generated
by NPPs. Despite civilian nuclear programs dating back to the early 1960s,
no country has yet developed an environmentally safe means of disposing of
NPP's nuclear by products, and these three issues are forcing a slow but significant
worldwide rethink on the viability of nuclear electrical production.

Needless to say, the well-entrenched world nuclear power generation, with
trillions of dollars invested and potentially billions more in the form of
new NPP contracts, is fighting a furious rear-guard action, but the ultimate
outcome of the titanic struggle is anything but clear, given a number of recent
events.

On 14 September, bowing to public opposition, Japan's government joined Germany
and Switzerland in turning away from nuclear power after the March 2011 earthquake
unleashed a tsunami that destroyed Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s six-reactor Fukushima
Daiichi NPP complex. The decision represents a major about-face by the Japanese
government of Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, which before Fukushima stated
that the nation's energy policy would increase the country's share of atomic
energy to more than half of the country's electricity generation. Noda's government
intended to ramp up by 300 percent the country's share of renewable power to
30 percent of its energy mix. Noda's decision earlier this year to restart
two NPPs to avoid potential summer power outages, flying in the face of public
opinion, energized anti-nuclear protests.

Noda's government's decision to phase out the country's NPPs by both refusing
to extend nuclear plant operating licenses beyond 40 years and committing to
building no new ones provoked an immediate and predictable backlash from Japan's
powerful nuclear energy lobby, which argued that the short sighted decision
would boost electricity prices, making industry uncompetitive and complicating
efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Nearly fifty years ago, when the U.S. led the way in deploying civilian nuclear
electricity NPPS, proponents excitedly maintained that soon electricity would
be "too cheap to measure."

But, while this advertising slogan never panned out, a second nuclear power
reality overlooked by proponents of its centrality to a nation's power generation
base is the uncomfortable fact that it was in fact born from the stupendously
expensive U.S. "Manhattan Project," which produced the nuclear weapons dropped
on Japan in august 1945, which both ended World War Two and inaugurated the
Cold War. The nexus between civilian electrical power generation and weaponry
have existed uneasily since then, as evidenced by the recent international
campaign against Iran.

So, what to make of Japan's tepid decision to downsize its nuclear energy
commitment? Thoughtful analysts might note that Europe's leading technological
powerhouses, Germany and Japan, have apparently decided to pursue energy alternatives
to nuclear while France, Europe's leading user of nuclear energy, is also rethinking
its position.

Do Berlin and Tokyo know something that other nations do not? Whatever occurs,
expect a vigorous rear-guard action by the global nuclear power industry, as
it attempts to preserve its multi-billion dollar industry, starting with them
suddenly joining the climate change bandwagon by emphasizing that NPPs generate
zero greenhouse gases.

Which, of course, is why former Fukushima residents outside the NPP's 12 mile
exclusion zone breathe so much more easily.

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